A couple of ravens have been shouting at each other across the garden each day this spring-into-summer, and their loud-mouthed antics reminded me of a somewhat less bawdy conversation about crows and ravens that I had a decade ago on the podcast with ornithologist Dr. John Marzluff of the University of Washington—a conversation I want to reprise on today’s show. 

Possessing large brains for their body size, a knack for social networking that requires no internet connection, and keen powers of observation, crows and ravens are among the big personalities of the bird world. 

They are also what Dr. Marzluff calls, “black-feathered practitioners of lifelong learning,” and from him I learned about the capacity of their avian brains and the range of things it allows them to do–from the funny to the daring, much of it almost unbelievable.  

Dr. John Marzluff is a renowned ornithologist and urban ecologist, and professor emeritus of wildlife sciences at the University of Washington. He is author a number of books, including ones about his area of particular expertise, the corvids—crows, ravens, jays and their relatives.  Around the time that we recorded this conversation, I had just read the book he created in collaboration with illustrator Tony Angell called “Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans,” which was the subject of our discussion. 

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